About Me

Monday, March 28, 2016

THE MARK IN AMERICA, ISSUE #2, PAGE 24

In those
innocent times, back in the early 90’s, a would-be terrorist such as Helda
could entire a high security environment with a purse filled with grenades. Ah,
the good old days…

Panel
3 is ridiculous, but unavoidable. One grenade alone wouldn’t have done the job
on either The Mark or The Archon, but neither I nor the writer, Mike Barr,
wanted to waste time/page space on watching Helda pull the pin and throw
several of them. Plus, logically speaking, the audience around her would have
probably stopped her before she got the second one off. So this almost
laughable cheat was necessary.

As
much as I detest the coloring on this series, John A. Wilcox got one thing
right: if he used the computer he kept it a secret on these pages. There aren’t
any of the painterly effects and garish over-renderings that have plagued
comics in the last 20 years. God, I’m sounding like Alex Toth, but it’s true.
One of my pet peeves is self-color lines in explosions and gun fire efx. It’s
like these colorists have never taken an Intro-to-Color class. If one colors
the black lines yellow or even red, or colors the bulk of the explosion a dark
color, it REDUCES impact. Black against white (or yellow) is one of the most
dramatic contrasts you can get, and any other color combo should be considered
with reluctance.

And
this is the end of issue #2. For the next few days I’ll be posting recent
additions to my collection of original art by other artists.

This
is page 24 for "The Mark" issue 2, volume 2, otherwise known as
"The Mark In America", published by Dark Horse Comics in January
1994. Written by Mike Barr, drawn by Brad Rader.